Brooklyn, Queens Had 40% Of City’s Police Complaints

CCRB Gripes Drop In 110, Spike In 108

The Civilian Complaint Review Board released lastTuesday, July 2, its 12-month status report for 2012, whichindicated that Brooklyn and Queens accounted for 40 percentof the agency’s total complaint intake.

In 2012, people filed three percent fewer police misconduct complaints than in 2011, and 22 percent fewer than in 2008. In 2012, there were 5,763 complaints, compared to 6,969 in 2011 and 7,395 in 2008.

Looking at total number of incidents, there were 16 fewer from Queens in 2012 than in 2011, a two percent drop.

The three Queens precincts with the highest number of complaints were the 113th, the 103rd and the 101st precincts, which had 100, 98 and 91 complaints, respectively. The precinct with the biggest drop in complaints generated was the 110th Precinct, which went from 56 in 2011 to 38 in 2012, a 32 percent decline in complaints.

The next biggest drop was in the 115th Precinct, which was down 25 percent, from 73 to 55.

The 108th Precinct had the biggest spike in the number of complaints, up 71 percent from 21 in 2011 to 36. However, the totals from both years were low when compared to most other Queens precincts.

Report highlights regarding stop, question and frisk complaints:

• Stop-and-frisk complaints have accounted for roughly one 30 percent of the agency’s total intake since 2005. In 2012, 27 percent of CCRB complaints involved an allegation of an improper stop, question, frisk or search stemming from a street encounter. This is a decrease of four percentage points from 31 percent in 2008.

• The actual number of stop, question and frisk complaints declined by five percent from 1,640 in 2011 to 1,551 in 2012. In 2012, the number of documented NYPD street encounters dropped 22 percent, from 685,724 in 2011 to 533,0425.

• The CCRB’s data shows that people were most likely to complain about a street encounter if they were searched. While officers documented searches in nine percent of street encounters, 58 percent (902) of the 1,551 stop-related complaints in 2012 contained an allegation of an improper search.

• Forty percent of the time, people making stop-and-frisk complaints had been arrested or summonsed, compared to documented street encounters where 11 percent led to an arrest or summons.